seo

All social and SEO plugins – except one that I know of – use the full size image URL from the WordPress media library when adding image meta tags to the webpage (ie. og:image, twitter:image, etc.), and/or adding images to Schema JSON-LD markup for the webpage. This can be problematic for several reasons…

WPSSO Core v3.52.0 includes a new “Robots” option for search engines / SEO in the post edit Publish metabox (see the changelog here). Uncheck the “meta name robots” option under the SSO > Advanced > Head Tags List > SEO / Other tab to hide / exclude the “Robots” option from the Publish metabox (enabled by default if no SEO plugin is detected).

This new WPSSO Core version includes a new “Person” role for users – this role is added to all new users by default. You can uncheck the “Add Person Role for New Users” option under the SSO > Advanced > Integration tab to disable this automatic feature (enabled by default). The “Person” role will be used by WPSSO JSON for selects requiring a “Person” role for its Schema markup.

WPSSO Core v3.53.0 also includes fix for the image upscale feature – an incorrectly named variable prevented the proper calculation of the image upscale size.

Schema markup in JSON-LD format, which is not discussed here, has become essential for good SEO. The current version of Yoast SEO offers some basic Schema JSON-LD markup, while the WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup add-on for WPSSO Core provides extensive and complete Schema markup for Articles, Events, Images, Local Business, Products, Recipes, Reviews Videos, and more.

The social sharing aspects discussed in this article (meta tags, images, videos, etc.) from Yoast SEO and WPSSO Core are still mostly relevant, although Twitter has since dropped the Gallery, Photo, and Product cards.

A few years ago, most website visitors came from Google Search results. Plugins designed to optimize your content for Google Search became increasingly popular, and part of many “must have” plugin lists. Recently though, that trend has been shifting, as the percentage of visitors coming from social websites is increasing — often matching and sometimes out-pacing — the number of visitors from Google Search. Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins, like WordPress SEO by Yoast for example, have adapted to this change by stepping away from their core purpose, and re-using their SEO content to generate additional meta tags for social websites. But how good is an SEO plugin at addressing the needs of social websites? We compare WordPress SEO to WPSSO, a dedicated social sharing optimization plugin to find out.